43 Best Ways To Engage Your Viewers In Live Stream Chat

Krishi Shivasangaran Published On October 22nd, 2024 Tech Talks

Features, Tips & Strategies to make your viewers active on your live stream chat!

You’ve got only 8 seconds to grab a user’s attention. This world is distracted, and getting attention from users online is becoming a serious challenge day by day. 

But, what if we say, there’s a way to do this right?

• Capture audience attention
• Give them the right value
• Engage the audience
• Push your user base from 100s to millions

You read that right! Enterprises and Individuals have used Live Stream Chat to take their businesses to bigger heights overnight! 

No, we are not bragging. 

We’ve got some proofs on this:

1. Dunkin’ Donuts’s Marketing Strategy

In February 2016, the team at Dunkin’ Donuts wanted to try out live streaming as a marketing strategy for the National Donut Day. They decided to go live on Facebook for the first time to demonstrate how to make a cake donut. 

Guess what, the event was a huge success, attracting 2,450 impressions, 900+ live chats, 33,000 views, and 567 shares.

People interacted, posed questions, and participated actively during the broadcast. 

2. L’Oreal’s Live Shopping Events

2020 was not a great year for many businesses. But not for L’Oreal. Although their hands were all tied from doing the usual events and campaigns due to worldwide lockdowns, the team figured out a new way to reach customers.

They hosted live shopping events on Facebook and Instagram, led by beauty experts and influencers. 

Why wouldn’t people engage when they’ve got their favorite celebrities online answering their questions directly? The live show received over 270 chat messages from the community in about 60 minutes and the company achieved a 146% percent growth in online retail orders in the next 8 weeks. 

3. Mogujie’s Product Showcase

The Chinese fashion social media and ecommerce platform Mogujie, was indeed a pioneer to test and try live streaming to engage customers. 

They took this to the next level by creating an interactive shopping environment where hosts would showcase products in real-time. 

Viewers started asking questions on the product, and the hosts responded to them immediately. The highlight was, the viewers were able to see how the products looked and functioned, giving them a visual sense of what they would feel if they purchased it. Undoubtedly, a huge hit strategy! 

Now, this is how you could drive crazy traffic to your live streams and achieve conversions, if you pitch it right. And you’ve got an amazing tool to do it – live stream chat. 

5 Live Stream Chat Features You Need For Maximum Engagement

If you’ve decided to use the chat feature in your live streaming platform effectively, then you must not miss out on these 5 features at any cost. 

1. Real-time Chat

People need a way to communicate their excitement, opinions and feedback to you during a stream. This is where you’ll understand the dire need for chat features. 

When you navigate your content right, you can see viewers amazingly engaging, asking questions and actively participating. 

2. Polls & Surveys. 

Your viewers are always going to have opinions and perspectives to share. This is a valuable opportunity to drive your viewers to engage on your streams. Viewers can share their opinions on topics, vote on decisions, or answer questions related to the stream content. 

While this feature engages your viewers, it also gives you all the insights you need to understand about your audience and their stand on the subject matter you are discussing on the stream. 

3. Emojis and Reactions

People express their opinions in different ways. In this era of chats and texting, emojis have become a mimic of real-human expressions. 

Now, when added as a feature on your live stream platform, you’ll see 100s of expressions coming out, even from ones who do not prefer to text in a live chat. 

4. Canned Responses

There is a great way to save your time in live stream chat. You can use pre-written canned responses to enable the host to quickly reply to common questions or greetings. 

In Canned responses, you can include welcome messages, FAQs, or promotional information, giving a sense of presence in the chat without getting bogged down by repetitive responses. 

5. Moderator Tools

There are going to be bad comments, from people who have a negative opinion on your subject of discussion. But you can’t just let people whatever they want, especially expressing abusive behavior. Now, this is where you’ll need moderation tools to keep things under control. 

On the other hand, Moderators can also highlight engaging comments, answer basic questions, and keep the conversation flowing smoothly, especially during high-traffic streams. 

There are 1000 more features you can add to your live streaming platform, but these 5 features play a huge role in keeping your streams more interactive, responsive, and helping you deliver a rewarding experience for their audience.

43 Ways To Make Live Stream Chat Fun & Engaging

Who are these strategies intended for?
Businesses & enterprises, social media influencers, YouTubers, gamers and streamers, beauty and makeup artists, fitness coaches, chefs and food creators, fashion influencers, tech reviewers, travel vloggers, musicians and performers, online educators and tutors, home decorators and DIY creators, health and wellness coaches, pet influencers, lifestyle bloggers, artists and crafters, sports commentators, financial advisors and coaches, authors and writers, nonprofit organizations and anyone who’d like to make a successful business out of their live streams.

Live streams are popular. Actually, it’s so popular that it estimates 27.7% of the total content users watch per week. That’s huge! 

And this gives businesses a great opportunity to engage users. By fact, the primary source of engagement in an ongoing stream is live chat. 

Let’s look into the different ways we can use the messaging feature in a live stream to make users interact and turn them into potential customers. 

1. Greet: You can ask your viewers to introduce themselves on chat. People find joy in displaying their name in a huge public forum. 
2. Q & A Sessions: People can ask questions about an ongoing presentation or a demo in the chat panel. Hosts can address all of these chats in a separate Q& A session.
3. Live Polls: Streams must not be one-way communication, if you focus on engagement. In this case, it would not be wise to unmute all viewers and let everyone speak, unlike in a video conferencing platform. It would turn into chaos. Rather, you could start a poll and wait for people to record their responses. On closure of the poll, you can summarize the results and gather an understanding of your audience’s stand on your poll question. 
4. Live Comments: You could address the comments in real-time to make people feel seen and heard in a stream. By doing this, you are letting people know that you care about their opinions. 
5. Acknowledgement: When someone sends a chat message, you could acknowledge them, making them feel valued.
6. Opinions: Call out viewers to type their opinions or take on a subject matter and send it in chat. This way you can engage them and keep them on the same page.
7. Shout-outs: Highlight the contribution of your viewers during the streams with shout-outs.
8. Hashtags: You can create a unique hashtag for your stream content and encourage users to use it in the chat or on their social media when they’d like to share about it on their profile. 
9. Stream questions: Besides Q& A in chat, you can encourage your viewers to submit questions on the streams. 
10. Highlight: You can even utilize a moderator to manage and highlight engaging comments in real-time. This truly motivates the viewers to contribute more on chat.
11. Quizzes/ Games. You can incorporate quizzes or trivia games and ask the viewers to send out their answers in live chat. It would be both fun and engaging. 
12. 12. Media: Use graphics or infographics in your chat replies to make the live communication even more fun and engaging.
13. Recognition: Create an ‘active participant of the stream’ recognition program based on the participant’s level of engagement and the value they added to the stream through chat. 
14. Experiences. Ask people to share their own experiences on the topic that you are discussing on the stream. 
15. Guest Chat. Include special guests—such as industry experts, influencers, or other relevant figures—during your live stream and allow them to interact with your viewers. Their presence can add value and diversity to the content.

16. Chatbots. Make use of chatbots for basic FAQs while still engaging with more complex questions personally.

17. Points System. Implement a points system where active participants earn points redeemable for prizes.

18. Badges. Introduce interactive elements like virtual gifts or badges for active participants.

19. Feedback. Every now and then, ask viewers to post their message about the quality of the stream, and if you need to explain any of the previously discussed topics again for better understanding.

20. Build community. Prompt viewers to connect with each other in the chat, so they could interact and learn more about the topic, in different perspectives. 

21. Resources. Share relevant articles, links, or resources in the chat for further exploration after discussing them live.

22. Suggestions. Ask for suggestions on how you can improve future streams based on viewer feedback collected through chat interactions. 

23. Emojis. Some don’t always prefer to express themselves through texts. They could make use of emojis and engage in the stream. 

24. BTS/ Bloopers. Share behind-the-scenes content or bloopers, prompting viewer reactions in chat.

25. Contests. Run contests where participation in chat is required for entry, such as answering questions correctly.

26. Highlights. You can also share highlights from the chat during post-stream discussions, acknowledging valuable contributions.

27. CTAs. Include clear CTAs throughout your stream, encouraging viewers to engage in specific ways (e.g., “Type ‘yes’ if you agree!”).

28. Milestones. Invite viewers to share their milestones in chat and acknowledge them during streams, such as anniversaries or subscriber counts, involving viewers in the celebration.

29. UGC. Share  the user-generated content that viewers share in chat during streams, showcasing contributions from your audience.

30. Countdowns. Utilize countdowns before key segments, building anticipation within the chat.

31. Sneak Peek. Provide exclusive sneak peeks or previews of upcoming content in the chat.

32. Anticipation. If you want your users to really participate in the streams, you need some pre-works. Build anticipation and promote your live stream in advance. 

33. Agenda. When you have an agenda, people are more likely to be involved right when their topic of interest starts.

34. Open-ended Questions. You can pose an engaging question at the start of an event and ask viewers to answer in chat, to keep them engaged right from the start. 

35. Guidelines. Brief viewers about the chat guidelines, so everyone on the stream can feel things are safe around. 

36. Moderation. Ensure you set up an auto-moderation to remove/ restrict chat messages with profane or abusive language. This keeps the entire streaming experiences secure for your viewers. 

37. Follow up. Get in touch with viewers after the stream via email or social media, thanking them for participating and encouraging continued engagement.

38. Personal stories/ Experiences. Share personal stories or experiences related to your topic, inviting viewers to relate and respond in chat.

39. Revenue. Use chat data to identify potential revenue streams, such as sponsorships or product placements.

40. Identify potential prospects. Use chat data to identify potential brand ambassadors, influencers, or content creators to work with.

41. Optimize Streams. Use chat data to optimize the timing, frequency, and duration of future live streams. Analyze them to identify trends, popular topics, and areas where you need to improve. 

42. Thank the viewers. Provide viewers with a sense of closure by thanking them for their participation.

43. Promote. Use the chat to promote any upcoming live streams, products, or events.

The Secret To Building A Captivating Live Streaming App 🤫

Do you know, you can build your own Live Streaming App all by yourself, even if you are not a techie or a business without a tech team?

Yes, things have become so simple with the pre-built live streaming SDK from MirrorFly. 

MirrorFly is a leading CPaaS provider that offers businesses a highly customizable white-label solution for creating their own live streaming platforms. 

With its secure API and SDK, MirrorFly enables thousands of real-time features to be integrated into your app, allowing you to deliver an engaging and interactive streaming experience to your audience.

There are good number of reasons to choose MirrorFly:

• 100% customizable solution with full source code ownership
• Low latency streaming for seamless viewer experience
• Flexible hosting options (on-premise or on-cloud)
• Customizable security features to protect your platform
• Unlimited emojis and virtual backgrounds for streamers
• Co-hosting capabilities for more engaging streams
• Viewer recording and backstage mode for enhanced interactivity

Yes, you can build it all by yourself or hire our team to own your live streaming platform in the next 48 hours. Impressed already?

Now, get in touch with our experts, discuss your requirements, launch your app and go live! 

Let’s meet you in your streams!